United States Attorney General Todd Blanche finalized a federal regulation governing the restoration of federal firearm rights. The new process allows eligible individuals who are prohibited from possessing firearms to apply to have those rights restored.
“The Second Amendment is not a second-class right, and the federal government should not permanently deprive Americans of a constitutional right without regard to whether they pose a danger to public safety,” said Attorney General Todd Blanche. “This rule establishes a rigorous, common-sense process that protects the public while giving deserving Americans a real path to restoration.”
The signed rule has been transmitted to the Federal Register. DOJ cautions that the currently available text is unofficial until formally published.
A Restoration Process Congress Left Dormant for Decades
Section 922(g) prohibits certain categories of people (e.g., felons, domestic violence misdemeanants, unlawful drug users, fugitives, certain aliens, those under domestic violence restraining orders, etc.) from shipping, transporting, possessing, or receiving firearms or ammunition in or affecting commerce.
Section 925(c), however, has long authorized the Attorney General to grant relief if the applicant shows they “will not be likely to act in a manner dangerous to public safety” and that granting relief “would not be contrary to the public interest.”
The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) previously administered this process by delegation. Still, Congress defunded it via appropriations riders starting in 1992, rendering the program inoperative for over 30 years.
In March 2025, DOJ issued an interim final rule withdrawing the ATF delegation. In July 2025, it published a notice of proposed rulemaking with detailed criteria. After receiving over 15,500 comments (roughly 91% supportive of restoring a workable process), the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) finalized the rule.
The program will now be operated through the Office of the Pardon Attorney rather than ATF, although the Attorney General retains the ultimate decision-making authority.
When Will Applications Open?
The rule becomes effective 30 days after publication in the Federal Register, but DOJ plans to roll out the application process in stages.
According to the Department’s current Federal Firearm Rights Restoration website:
- Thirty days after publication, DOJ will begin inviting candidates to apply.
- Seventy-five days after publication, the application will open to the public, beginning with the first 5,000 applicants.
- At 120 days, DOJ will accept another 500 applicants and begin collecting the application fee.
The Department directs prospective applicants to justice.gov/ffrr for updated eligibility information, application instructions, and the eventual online application.
Who Will Be Presumptively Disqualified?
According to the DOJ, the rule aims to protect Second Amendment rights while ensuring public safety. Relief is discretionary and guided by statutory standards.
Several offenses are presumptively permanent disqualifications. These include violent felonies (homicide, kidnapping, terrorism, stalking, and other crimes of violence), convictions involving brandishing or discharging a firearm, sex offenses requiring registration under SORNA that also trigger a § 922(g) prohibition, and felony-level domestic violence.
There will also be other time-limited presumptive disqualifications, including drug trafficking convictions or misdemeanor domestic violence: at least 10 years after completing the sentence (including probation/supervised release), and other felony convictions: at least 5 years after completing the sentence.
Other statuses that are presumptively ineligible are being a fugitive from justice (§ 922(g)(2)), unlawfully present aliens or certain nonimmigrants (§ 922(g)(5)), and persons subject to qualifying domestic violence restraining orders (§ 922(g)(8)).
The final presumptively ineligible status is being an unlawful user of or addicted to controlled substances (§ 922(g)(3)) — until the pattern of use ends. That final category seems to be at odds with the United States Supreme Court’s unanimous decision in Hemani. Still, the DOJ does not believe it is at odds because the Hemani opinion was narrow.
What the Supreme Court Held in Hemani
The Supreme Court held that the federal government could not prosecute Ali Hemani under 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(3) based solely on evidence that he regularly used marijuana while possessing a gun in his home. The government did not allege that Hemani was addicted, intoxicated when he possessed the firearm, incapable of managing his affairs, or dangerous to himself or others. Nor did it claim that he had misused the gun.
The Court rejected the government’s attempt to treat anyone who regularly used any amount of a controlled substance as categorically dangerous. Historical laws dealing with intoxication and “habitual drunkards” targeted different conduct, operated differently, and generally required more than the mere regular use of an intoxicating substance.
The Supreme Court nevertheless described its decision as narrow. It did not decide whether the government may disarm people who are addicted or presently intoxicated. It also did not decide whether § 922(g)(3) could be applied when the government presents individualized proof that a person’s drug use makes him dangerous—or proof that a particular drug always renders its users dangerous. The Court expressly declined to pass on those questions either way.
In short, mere regular marijuana use, without more, was insufficient to support the government’s automatic and categorical ban as applied to Hemani.
DOJ Creates a Marijuana Exception
In response to Hemani and the large number of public comments addressing marijuana, DOJ amended the final rule to create an important exception.
For purposes of the rule’s drug-related presumption, DOJ’s definition of “controlled substance” does not include marijuana. As a result, unlawful use of or addiction to marijuana alone does not trigger the same presumption of ineligibility that applies to users or addicts of other controlled substances. The Department also removed proposed requirements that applicants and their character references affirm that the applicant does not use or is not addicted to marijuana.
DOJ acknowledges that excluding marijuana addicts, not merely marijuana users, goes beyond the facts presented in Hemani. The Department says distinguishing a marijuana “user” from a marijuana “addict” would require a highly fact-specific inquiry that could undermine the administrability of the restoration process.
That does not mean marijuana use automatically restores anyone’s firearm rights or removes a federal disability under 922(g)(3). The statute remains on the books, and the relief process itself remains discretionary.
Instead, an applicant whose only drug-related issue involves marijuana may apply without facing the rule’s extraordinary-circumstances presumption. DOJ may still consider the applicant’s marijuana use and other individual circumstances when deciding whether restoration would be consistent with public safety and the public interest.
For controlled substances other than marijuana, the presumption remains. Someone who continues to qualify as an unlawful user or addict will generally be denied absent extraordinary circumstances. Because that disability is status-based, an individual may ordinarily remove himself from the prohibited category by ending the unlawful conduct and breaking the pattern of ongoing use.
What Applicants Must Submit
An applicant must complete the required form and disclose all federal firearm disabilities for which relief is requested. Required materials may include:
- Electronic fingerprints or properly completed fingerprint cards.
- Certified or otherwise reliable court records.
- Charging documents, judgments, plea agreements, and presentence reports.
- Proof that every requirement of the sentence has been completed.
- State criminal-history records for each jurisdiction in which the applicant has lived or been arrested during the applicable period.
- Relevant military, mental-health, domestic violence, citizenship-renunciation, or foreign records.
- Affidavits from three qualified character references.
- Authorization for DOJ to obtain additional background information.
The final rule shifts responsibility for local law-enforcement notification to DOJ. The Department will notify the appropriate chief law-enforcement officer for the locality where the applicant resides and allow that agency to submit information supporting or opposing restoration.
The application fee is $30 once the fee stage begins, up from the proposed $20. DOJ will periodically review the fee and conduct an audit after the program has operated long enough to produce reliable cost information. Applicants may request a fee waiver or reduction, including for economic hardship.
How DOJ Will Decide Who Gets Relief
The Attorney General may consider the applicant’s entire record, including criminal history, dismissed charges associated with a plea agreement, conduct while incarcerated or under supervision, time since completion of the sentence, rehabilitation, threats, restraining orders, drug use, mental health, character references, and information supplied by local law enforcement.
Significantly, the final rule also allows the Attorney General to consider whether denying relief under an applicant’s individual circumstances would infringe the applicant’s Second Amendment rights.
If relief is granted, DOJ will publish notice of the decision and the reasons for it in the Federal Register. Any restoration applies only to the federal disability addressed in the application. It does not erase independent state or tribal firearm prohibitions, and it does not protect an individual from a new disability arising from later conduct.
An applicant denied relief may petition the United States District Court for the district in which he resides for judicial review.
A members-only shooting range that’s operated in Gloucester Township for more than three-quarters of a century is fighting a lawsuit that could put it out of business — the latest in a long line of pressure that tends to show up right about the time the surrounding land gets valuable.
Iron Horse Rifle & Pistol Club has run rifle, pistol, and archery ranges on the Waddell family’s farmland off Garwood Road, in the township’s Erial section, since the late 1940s. Its neighbors are the newcomers.
As 55-and-older developments like Four Seasons at Forest Meadows rose around it over the past two decades, residents repeatedly pushed the township to restrict or close the range over noise and stray-round complaints — a fight that boiled over into a 2013 homeowner lawsuit and years of township hearings.
Grandfathered in long before the subdivisions arrived, the range kept operating. It’s the same slow squeeze TTAG has documented again and again: a range built out in the country, then hemmed in by houses whose owners decide the guns have to go.
This time the challenge comes from a developer.
The Lawsuit
According to a complaint filed in Camden County Superior Court, Bryn Mawr Garwood LLC — a company New Jersey business records list as newly formed in 2026, with Pennsylvania real-estate attorney Harvey Sternberg as its principal — is suing the entity that runs the range, Iron Horse R&R LLC.
The suit rests on environmental allegations: that the range has engaged in “solid waste disposal and soil stockpiling” and hauled stockpiles, asphalt millings, construction debris, and “potentially contaminated soil, from unknown sources” onto the adjoining property.
The complaint’s own hedging stands out. “Potentially contaminated” recurs throughout, and the filing concedes the soil at issue “has not been tested.” For a case premised on contamination, that’s a conspicuous gap — a basic lead screen runs about $18 at the Rutgers Soil Testing Laboratory, with a fuller workup running a few thousand.
The Range’s Response
Iron Horse casts the environmental theory as a pretext for a land grab, arguing the plaintiff’s real aim is to force the range dark so the neighboring Waddell parcel can be redeveloped. Its attorney, Mark Karpo — who isn’t licensed in New Jersey and has applied to appear pro hac vice — says the club served discovery seeking any expert reports behind the contamination claims and got nothing back.
A Familiar Playbook
However this shakes out, the shape is one gun owners know well. Ranges rarely die by a dramatic vote; they get zoned, sued, and studied out of existence, usually because they lack the money to outlast the litigation even when they’d ultimately win.
Many states have responded with range-protection statutes that shield grandfathered ranges from exactly these nuisance-and-zoning plays — New Jersey’s protections are thinner than most. Public campaign-finance records filed with NJ ELEC can establish whether, and how much, the plaintiff has given to local officials; that’s worth reporting as a plain fact, without asserting a connection the record doesn’t prove.
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There is actually a legal concept that addresses this: “coming to the nuisance.”
If a lawful use of property existed before you purchased neighboring property, the fact that you later find that existing use objectionable does not automatically give you the right to force it to change or shut down.
The classic example is buying a home next to an existing farm and then complaining about the noise, odors, equipment, or livestock.
The fact that the farm was already there and that you knew or reasonably should have known about its operations when you purchased the property is highly relevant in a nuisance dispute.
The same principle applies to an established shooting range.
If the range was lawfully operating before you purchased the neighboring property, its existence and the ordinary noise associated with its operation were conditions you knew, or reasonably should have known, existed when you chose to buy there.
In legal terms, “coming to the nuisance” is not an absolute defense in every jurisdiction or under every set of facts. A property owner generally cannot use it as permission to substantially expand, materially change, or unlawfully operate a nuisance.
But that’s very different from knowingly purchasing property next to a pre-existing, lawfully operating range and then demanding that the range alter or cease the same type of operation that existed when you bought the property.
Put simply: you bought next to the range; the range didn’t move in next to you. The law can take that distinction seriously.
*Except this is New Jersey and a lot of money is riding on this “development”. So I am willing to bet that the fix is already in with the powers that be. But then I am a born again cynic about these things. Grumpy*
Categories
Foreigners !!
California still wants to regulate 3D printers because people can use them to make firearms without the state’s blessing. Its vehicle is AB 2047, a bill originally designed to force printer makers to build in technology capable of detecting and blocking gun files.
But after a round of amendments, the bill has been substantially watered down. What started as a mandate is now more of a regulatory tripwire — one that may never actually be triggered.
From Mandate to Maybe
Introduced in February by Assemblymember Rebecca Bauer-Kahan (D-Orinda), AB 2047 originally would have required 3D printers sold or transferred in California to include state-approved “firearm blocking technology” — hardware or software designed to prevent the machine from printing files identified as firearms or firearm components.
The amended version doesn’t actually establish that standard.
Instead, beginning no later than July 1, 2027, the California Department of Justice would check quarterly to see whether ASTM International — the private standards organization involved in additive manufacturing, the industry’s term for 3D printing — has published standards for firearm-blocking technology.
If ASTM does, DOJ gets 24 months to develop guidance or regulations based on those standards. Per the bill, those rules would establish “minimum performance standards” necessary to safely, fairly and effectively implement the technology statewide.
And if ASTM hasn’t published anything by July 1, 2029?
The bill says DOJ “shall not be required to make any further determinations under this section.”
In other words, no ASTM standards, no California regulations under AB 2047.
At least for now.
Passing the Buck
The amended bill flips the original structure on its head.
Instead of California lawmakers deciding what firearm-blocking technology must do, they wait for an outside standards organization to establish the technical foundation. If that happens, DOJ gets to turn it into regulations.
Politically, that’s convenient.
Lawmakers get to vote for “doing something about ghost guns” without having to explain how the technology is actually supposed to work. If the eventual regulations are expensive, ineffective or technologically impossible, DOJ owns the details.
The legislators simply created the machine and walked away.
Legislating by handing the hard decisions to unelected regulators is an interesting move for a political class that spends so much time warning everyone about threats to democracy.
There’s Another Problem: Does This Technology Even Work?
That’s the bigger question hanging over AB 2047.
The blocking software envisioned by proposals like this would somehow have to recognize firearm-related geometry while allowing the countless ordinary objects that contain identical or similar shapes.
A printer doesn’t inherently know whether a particular hole, tube, spring, cavity or other geometry is destined to become part of a firearm, a household object, a prototype or something else entirely.
Even the federal Justice Department has gone looking to the 3D-printing industry for help with the problem.
Then there’s the First Amendment.
The California Senate’s own committee analysis raised questions about restricting what a printer can produce and the unsettled issue of whether computer code constitutes protected speech. California is already fighting on similar ground in its lawsuit involving websites that distribute 3D gun files.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation has also blasted the proposal, arguing that it would effectively build censorship into the printer itself.
That’s what makes AB 2047 more interesting than another California “ghost gun” bill. The state isn’t merely trying to regulate what someone manufactures. It’s attempting to regulate what a general-purpose machine is allowed to process.
The Clock Is Running
AB 2047 cleared the Assembly in May and has since moved through the Senate Judiciary and Public Safety committees.
It now faces the Senate floor — and a deadline.
The Legislature has until August 31 to pass bills this session. If the Senate approves AB 2047 without further amendments, it heads to Gov. Gavin Newsom. If senators change it again, it goes back to the Assembly for concurrence.
That doesn’t leave much time.
Then again, this is California and we’re talking about gun control. Finding time has rarely been the problem.
The Bottom Line
On its face, the amendments look like a win for 3D-printer manufacturers, hobbyists and anyone else who doesn’t particularly like the idea of government-approved software deciding what their machine is allowed to print.
But this isn’t a clean escape.
California hasn’t abandoned firearm-blocking technology. It has outsourced the trigger.
If ASTM never produces the standards, AB 2047 could amount to little more than bureaucratic homework. If ASTM does, however, California DOJ already has the legislative framework it needs to start turning those standards into rules.
The bill deserves to die, teeth filed down or not. A law that outsources its technical trigger to a private standards organization and leaves the actual requirements to regulators is questionable lawmaking before we even get to whether the underlying technology works.
But this is California, in the closing days of the legislative session, with a super majority that rarely lets a gun-control bill expire quietly.
The smart bet isn’t that AB 2047 dies.
It’s that California passes the framework now and waits for someone else to pull the trigger.
